My husband has a big family, so our first inkling was much like many others; let's start planning a wedding! We looked at venues, cities, countries. I went wedding dress shopping at Vera Wang (and did end up getting a dress from Glamour Closet--which is a story for another time) and started contacting photographers and picking dates.

A few months go by. The further into planning we got, the more things started to come to light. This wedding wouldn't be for us. It would be for a handful of friends and for family.

It wouldn't be about us. It would be about them.

Tim and I were going in to this, like many couples, with no help from either side of our families and the idea of spending $5,000 on a venue alone became more and more daunting. The costs were adding up and the pros did not outweigh the cons.

I have been a happy guest in over a dozen weddings, spent a boatload as a bridesmaid; supported the bride and groom on their happy day. Being on the other side of that, as a bride with no family to help, or even turn to, was definitely not as much fun. Why put all this time, money and energy into something if we felt this way?

So we stopped.

Instead, we started planning our elopement at the Sandals Ochi Beach Resort. Our Weddingmoon. Where it would be just the two of us having a good time. No one would ruin our day. The attention, rightfully so on me and my husband. It was intimate and simple and we thought it would be the perfect way to have a ceremony for two and still have a "wedding".

We sent out our elopement announcements / save the dates and registered on Sandal's fun Weddingmoon registry and...no one cared?

Important to note thatthis reaction wasn't exactly a surprise. When we first announced our engagement, the celebration stopped after the two hundred thumbs up reactions on Facebook.

How many bridal showers, engagement parties, rehearsals and receptions have I sat through, laughed through, cried during? Not one single person could have been bothered to care that we were getting married?

What was so wrong with me that I didn't get to have that special bridal moment? Why was no one celebrating me (us)?

And suddenly it was stressful again. And it wasn't a fun Jamaican getaway anymore.

So we went to City Hall. We got our wedding license and picked a day we were both off from work (which happened to be the day the Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years) and we did it. We got married.

And you know what?

It was beautiful.

Time stopped in that tiny room when it was just me and him, repeating those vows and looking each other in the eye. Just the two of us. Just our love. 15 minutes. We were husband and wife.

I wore a dress from Forever 21 and he wore a suit we bought the day before at H&M. We had a friend follow us around downtown and take pictures before ending our night with a dinner at the Signature Room and came home to snuggle with our furbaby.